Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  He was outside of this, outside of everything. He did not fit in, and so he had been spewed out like the phlegm in the gutters. The era of freedom, the era when he could stand above the groupings and say his say without regard to their milling and moving, was closed. He was thirty-four years old and already an anachronism.

  Another publisher!

  He laughed out loud, and people eyed him, shrugged, and went on.

  The commercial houses would have the same holy fear of the truth as Barsiny; for the Catholics, he didn’t have enough unction and dogma, for the Right he was too left, and for the Left, too right. There was not even a human being to whom he could turn, except Kitty whose helpfulness would drive him screaming. Joseph would tell him to cut out everything that smacked of the faintest approval of socialist measures; and Karel would try to insist that freedom and paternalism could very well co-exist, and that under the new setup everybody would be his own father. And Stanek would have to condemn the Essay—his friends would tell him to.

  He was caught hanging in the nowhere, his feet treading on air, his hands clutching emptiness, and his head in an atmosphere so rarefied that he was gasping for breath. He had wanted to be objective, to find that station suspended by no ropes from no place, from which, the philosopher had said, one might lift the world out of its hinges; and the world had turned its back on him.

  What to do now with all his uselessness? Find another Elinor Simpson with skirts to hang on to? Rewrite the Essay to please any of a half-dozen groups he might pick by counting the buttons on his vest? Or die and leave it to posterity to discover that here, in the Year of the Lord 1948, lived a man not tied by temporal chains?

  He came into the drab lobby of his hotel. The smell, the dusty furniture, the spotted marble of the clerk’s counter merged depressively and intensified his weariness. He longed to get to his room, to throw himself on his bed, shoes and all, and try to sleep. He would sleep, even without pills; a great exhaustion filled him as if he had been bled.

  “Oh, Mr. Benda!”

  For a moment, he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then the clouds on his mind began to shift, and her face and features, her polite and yet urgent manner began to recall some duty postponed, some concession pushed off for later. He groaned inwardly.

  He thought he saw her gaze at the large envelope under his arm. “That’s my new book,” he parried the question he felt coming. “And I’m not going to tell you about it.”

  “Please,” she said, “please....” Her voice was like a cooling hand. “I’ll come back. Tonight.”

  “No, no, no!” he refused. “I’ve made you wait long enough.”

  “It wasn’t so long. And you look as if you need some rest.”

  It wasn’t so long. How long? An hour and a half, perhaps. It takes you two years to write out your soul, and a few minutes to have it thrown back at you.

  The name had finally filtered back into his mind. “Miss Rehan,” he told her, “it doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing else to do today, or tomorrow, or the day after. I might as well listen to you, now.”

  She shook her head gently, seriously.

  “I insist!” he said. “I had a little setback, I admit; but it’s nothing. These things happen every day, if not to me, then to somebody else.”

  “Oh yes,” she smiled, “I know how that is. And the body makes its demands. I’ve slept for days on end myself, at such times.”

  “You have?” he said gratefully.

  “I’ll be back about seven. If you’re up, fine. If not, I’ll check later.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and watched her go. How young she was, and how strong, and how knowing! But when she had disappeared through the revolving door, he forgot her again and stood alone, feeling as if every muscle had been stretched beyond endurance and been left unable to contract, like a tired rubber band.

  Several times during the afternoon he was awakened by his own chuckles. He had delightful dreams, a sequence of hilarious jokes whose points escaped him in the short intervals of consciousness, so that he wanted to fall back to sleep to recapture his mirth.

  The room was pitch-dark and the air close when, with a start, he came fully awake. It was already eight o’clock. The girl had probably been here and gone again. Too bad. A layer of giddiness had grown in him like plaster that closed up the crags of his defeat. He shaved, and washed his face and hands and chest, and combed his hair, and looked at himself. The hell with Barsiny! The hell with a generation that had no use for him! The greatest minds in history had been laughed at and misunderstood and rejected during their lifetime, only to be celebrated afterwards. Of course, the belated glory meant nothing to you, moldering in your grave; but it was a thought to be carried around with you like a concealed weapon. So he went downstairs.

  And there she was, coming toward him, greeting him.

  “Shall we have dinner together, Miss Rehan?” he asked, almost cheerfully.

  “I’ve had my dinner, thank you.”

  She was obviously lying. She looked undernourished. Her clothes were painfully neat, but worn. She was proud—pale, proper, and proud.

  “Well,” he said, “I have to have something. Perhaps you’ll sit with me, and change your mind.” He guided her into the dining room. “How’s the cuisine at Mademoiselle Declerques’s?”

  Vlasta looked glum.

  “I thought so,” he said, holding her chair for her. “And I think that it isn’t good for Petra to be jailed there. That kind of boarding school is just one step above a reformatory—or am I hurting your feelings, Miss Rehan?”

  He studied her. She was more than pale, proper, and proud—she was beautiful, with a virginal beauty. Her narrow, spirited face framed in black, her chaste lips, her slender, aquiline nose, were a piquant temptation; as a young leaf tempted you to open it, so did her stern lines challenge you to remold them into a smile.

  “No,” she said, “my feelings are not involved at all. And the Institute is a jail, especially for Petra.”

  “Is that what you’ve come to see me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Petra’s not happy there?”

  “She’s been incarcerated.”

  “But that’s medieval!”

  “So is the whole Institute!”

  “Does my brother know?”

  She spun one of the green and white cardboard coasters that advertised Pilsen beer. I doubt it. But if he does, his information comes from Mademoiselle, and it won’t be the truth.”

  He watched the play of her fingers, long, slender fingers, exciting, with oval-shaped nails. “Please, won’t you have something?” he asked, as the waiter came for the order.

  She agreed to take some soup and bread, items which were easy on his limited supply of ration stamps. And, yes, some wine. Thomas ordered brandy for himself.

  Sniffing the bouquet of the brandy in the fist-sized glass, he asked, “What really happened? Tell me all of it, please.” He gulped the brandy and waved to the waiter.

  More brandy, and more of the voice of the girl—and the memory of the Essay, pain and frustration, would grow duller and duller. Vlasta’s precise, even sentences pleased his ear. She was intelligent, with the clear, analytical reasoning of an intellectual. She was free of the sentiment with which Kitty muddied every situation; neither did she employ Lida’s disagreeable, self-centered sharpness which, in the end, negated all decent human impulse. Above all, she knew none of Elinor’s steamroller tactics which stamped under every dissenting concept.

  With a third brandy warming his stomach, the humor of his dreams crept back into his mood, and he began to evolve plots to hamstring Mademoiselle’s vengeance, to liberate Petra, to do something. That’s what had been his weakness, that’s what was at the bottom of his failure with the Essay—he had thought instead of acted, theorized instead of lived. The world of thought could not be divorced from life; theory was a derivative of practice; a good brawl was a lot more useful than a high-level debate.

  �
�I like Petra very much,” she was saying. “I didn’t know what to do. Mademoiselle was quite inaccessible and quite unreasonable, and her mouth was bleeding from the tooth she had lost. But I knew from Petra that your wife had written you might come to Prague—”

  His eyes narrowed momentarily. The reference to Kitty threatened to topple the latticework propping up his spirit.

  “Another brandy!” he called, and laughed without reason. “And what drink for you, Vlasta—may I call you Vlasta?”

  “I still have my wine. Anyway, to conclude, I got in touch with the office of your publishers and came here and waited for you.”

  “That was very sensible of you, Vlasta. Don’t look at my glass. Brandy sharpens my thinking, you know. Now, what do you feel we should do?”

  He settled back in his chair and let the age-streaked red curtains at the windows, the badly washed tablecloth, the wallpaper peeling off at the corners of the ceiling, penetrate his senses. He found with great satisfaction that none of these affected him.

  “You will talk to your brother, the Deputy,” she suggested, “and tell him to get Petra out?”

  “I will do no such thing,” he answered gravely. “If you wanted to let him know, why didn’t you go to him yourself?”

  “He’s a busy man—” she groped, “a politician—I am nobody....”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Once, when he visited the Institute.”

  “I see,” he chortled. “So you do know him! And you know that he would find it most obnoxious that his own daughter proposed to lead a strike, and that he would support any punishment Mademoiselle Declerques saw fit to administer.”

  Her half-smile told him how well they understood one another.

  “We’ll have to organize a coup de main,” he went on, laugh lines around his deep-set eyes, “be very anarchistic, use some force and violence, and kidnap the Deputy’s daughter. It’ll be sensational! Can’t you just see Mademoiselle and your Count Arkadij Tolstoy and all the other gnomes scurry about, after their prisoner is gone?”

  He was beaming. He didn’t care what she thought of the plan—she or anybody else. He was planning it! Always, other people had done the planning, and he had been assimilated into the plans. Any time he had wanted to do something important, he’d had to do it undercover. Not this time!

  “I can see them,” she confirmed. “I can also see myself out of a job.”

  “Very well stated!” he said. “The voice of reason! You think I’ve gone through some emotional crisis or other, and you think I’m off my balance, now—I assure you, I am not. I’ll give you reason for reason. What’s the good of my brother being a Deputy if he can’t get you another, better job?”

  “But you yourself told me he would support Mademoiselle!”

  “Leave it to me!” he said, his tongue heavy. “Vlasta Rehan, there is a secret bond between my brother Joseph and myself—Benda blood, solid stuff! He always comes to me when his soul is troubled—always. So this once I’ll come to him for help—for you, Vlasta Rehan.”

  He swayed and hinged his hands on the edge of the table. He saw her get up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home—to the Institute.”

  “Not yet, please—”

  “I must. It’s late. And you’re tired again.”

  “But the plan! We haven’t discussed the plan at all.”

  “You’re not serious about it?”

  He rose unsteadily. “Never was so serious in my life. What else is there to do?”

  She had no answer.

  “You see?”

  She walked ahead of him, out of the dining room.

  “Let me get you a cab!” he said. “You were disappointed in me. You’re wrong. When will I meet you again?”

  She looked at him with maddening abstraction. Her eyes had a velvety sheen, he noticed, and his mouth went dry.

  “I suppose,” she said, “tomorrow, when you’re sober.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said; and after he had tipped the clerk to get a cab and had put her into it, he kept mumbling, “Tomorrow,” and laughing to himself about the gnomes at the Institute.

  *****

  The next morning, he wired Kitty that he would have to stay in Prague for a few more days. He put his manuscript in his suitcase, and with the snapping of the lock, he determined to give himself a short vacation for living. Then he went to the Declerques Institute and waited on the other side of the street, trying to be unobtrusive, but keeping the door under observation.

  The girls came out, on their way to school, a chattering and yet awkwardly repressed crowd of not-quite women, chaperoned by two elderly ladies. After them, a dapper old gentleman emerged, swinging a cane, and walking off as if his joints were rusted. And finally Vlasta, a couple of books under her arm—she saw Thomas, stopped, and the flicker of a smile showed on her lips.

  Thomas lifted his hat courteously and joined her. He felt embarrassed, like a schoolboy meeting his first date. “Where are you headed?” he asked.

  “To the University.”

  “May I accompany you?”

  “Certainly.”

  For a while, they walked in silence. She carried herself erect, setting her feet as if her worn, flat-heeled shoes were dancing slippers.

  “How’s Petra?” he said, almost belligerently.

  “I haven’t been able to see her.” She hid her worry. “The same, I assume, as yesterday.”

  He chafed under her restraint. “Well—did you think up a better plan than mine?”

  “Look, Mr. Benda,” she said, avoiding his eyes, “perhaps I was mistaken to bother you. It’ll all blow over.”

  “You don’t believe I can deliver on my promises,” he said morosely. “That’s a premature judgment. I had a few drinks last night. Any other man in my situation would have put a bullet in his head!”

  “People don’t kill themselves so quickly.”

  Her voice had grown harsh; she knew what she was talking of. He was glad that she didn’t show the least bit of sympathy. He didn’t want sympathy. That he had at home.

  You’re quite wonderful,” he said suddenly. “You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

  Her steps slowed, and she shifted her books from one arm to the other. He saw her much-darned gloves; he wanted to take them off her hands and kiss her fingers.

  “Let’s understand one another, Mr. Benda. I am interested in Petra. She’s a lonely and imaginative and rebellious adolescent, and what has been done to her at home and what’s being done to her now is bad. This particular incident might blow over; but others are bound to follow. And then? Unless we help her, she’ll be warped for life.”

  “I want to help her, Vlasta,” he said humbly. “I want to help you to help her. Last night, you probably thought I wanted the mischief for mischief’s sake, or to get even with someone for something.” He took her arm and made her hold her stride to his. “Now, let’s start all over. What should we do?”

  “I have a key to the Declerques Institute.” She was thinking aloud. “All instructors have. But only Mademoiselle and the housekeeper have a key to the punishment room. I probably can filch the housekeeper’s—”

  “Vlasta!” he warned, “that’s my scheme!”

  “So it is,” she said, unruffled.

  “You like it, all of a sudden?”

  “Matters have changed because you have,” she said. “But what will you do with Petra afterwards?”

  “Take her to Rodnik, where she belongs.”

  “And what about her parents?”

  “They’ll be faced with the fait accompli.”

  They had reached the Möldau River and turned right along the quay, toward Smetana Square. St. Vitus’s Cathedral grew out of the mist on the other shore. Very conscious of being with her, he counted the minutes that remained to them.

  “I told you,” he said—and believed it himself—“I have some influence on my brother. But what will become of you?”


  She shrugged. “I can find another job if I have to.”

  “You won’t have to,” he grinned boyishly. “I’ve thought about that, too. I’m going to kidnap the both of you—please, hold your objections! You’re Petra’s friend, she likes you, she needs someone to like. She needs a tutor for a year or two, to prepare her for the entrance exams to the University. My brother Joseph has a big house, you can live there more comfortably and eat better than at Mademoiselle’s. And if you’re worried about your own University credits, you can go to Prague every so often and take your tests.”

  She did not comment.

  “Or is there somebody—somebody here in Prague...?” His anxiety was plain. He searched her expressionless face and went on hastily, “There isn’t. There should be! My God, Vlasta, you’re an exquisite woman!”

  “I’m anything but,” she said. “And I don’t go for flattery.”

  “I wasn’t flattering. Now you’ve interrupted me....Prague, yes. You might miss the excitement and the stimulation of the big city; but life in Rodnik has its compensations. Vlasta, I need someone like you, someone I can talk to, someone sane and sound and with a mind of her own. There’s nothing more debilitating to a creative person than to have to create in a vacuum, in a valley without echoes, a sea without bottom.”

  “You are married,” she said.

  “Yes, I am married,” he answered. “What has that got to do with it?”

  They were in front of the building of the Philosophical Faculty. She halted to say good-by to him. Her overcoat came open. He saw the silver locket and wondered what might be inside it.

  “Petra needs a teacher,” he said. “And I need a friend, not a bed companion.”

  Her thin face was turned to him, her eyes sedate and unpromising. “I agree to tutor Petra in Rodnik. It will be a business arrangement, subject to your brother’s approval, and with the understanding that I can leave if it shouldn’t work out.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PETRA sat gimlet-eyed.

  The phone call to Joseph had gone through hours ago; now they were waiting for his arrival. The letdown had set in, and Karel’s living room was nothing to cheer up anyone.